February 20 1991 Wednesday

Paul: I am experiencing a lot of frustration, and, at times, a lot of
anger. The phrase, “Nothing that I see means anything,” isn’t just an
idea or a statement, but it is, indeed, the way I am experiencing
everything at the moment. I don’t seem to be finding meaning in anything
that I see, or anything that is happening, or anything that I am doing.
Certainly the only thing that seems to be getting done is keeping
appointments. And although the individuals calling seem to experience
meaning from them, I am not.

I don’t even know how many days it has been since the last conversation
I had with you, but certainly the intervening time has not been spent in
no thought, or no thinking. And I have not been particularly conscious
of being with you. I am aware that there are a lot of similarities now
to our first conversatons, 1 in that, for example, I must say that the
things you are saying don’t seem to be relevant. My experience doesn’t seem to
be changing. It seems to be getting worse—I mean by that, less fulfilling and
less of what it used to be.

I feel less in touch with people, less in touch with meaning, and
although what I am about to say doesn’t reflect exactly what I’m feeling
at the moment, there is a certain amount of—I can’t even think of the
word—a certain amount of pleasure, a certain amount of good feeling,
because, in spite of being frustrated and all, in spite of nothing
seeming to improve, it does feel finally like I am growing, somehow. It
does feel like there is movement, it does feel like an old familiar
feeling of, I will say, stress, associated with what turned out to be
breakthrough when you first came along. And so. In that sense I guess it
does feel like something is happening for me, as opposed to just
happening for everyone else. But, I don’t know that I’m doing any of
this any more gracefully than I did the first time.

Anyway, … that’s where I am at the moment, and I will be interested in
anything you have to say.

Raj: It is, indeed, very simple, Paul. You are in an identity crisis.
You are struggling to maintain a sense of identity, or get hold, again,
of a sense of identity that is crumbling. I will tell you something: A
sense of identity is not a fair substitute for Identity, Itself. I will
say, it is an unfair misrepresentation of Identity, Itself, and yet it
is, up to this point, all that you have known “in this lifetime.” And
since that is all of your infinity that you have any conscious embrace
of, it does, indeed, seem as though your identity is crumbling.

That is why everything is becoming meaningless. After all, if you don’t
know who is observing it, how can you know how to interpret it? And, of
course, interpreting Reality does constitute a translating of It into
other terms, doesn’t it—terms other than Its original form or
expression? If you have been living in an interpretation of Reality from
a sense of identity, where have you been? Up Shit Creek, that’s where!
In other words, nowhere.

Now, with the breakup of a sense of Identity must come the breakup of
the interpretation of Reality. What you have construed your Identity to
be, and what this sense of Identity has interpreted Reality to be is
giving up the ghost, fading, becoming the no-thing and the nothing that
they are. This means that your self, as a point of awareness in
infinity, being aware from that point of awareness—which is an utterly
false sense of All That Is—is yielding to Awareness, Itself.

All-embracing Awareness is not a sense of Identity. It is Identity. But,
being infinite, It cannot gather a sense of Itself from anything else.
Thus, Identity and Awareness, Consciousness, are synonymous. If you want
to know who you are, then be aware, and pay attention to the experience!
And understand that waking up constitutes, indeed, a loss of identity. I
mean by that, a loss of everything that has been experienced and defined
as identity by you up to this point. I cannot put it more simply than
that.

The sense of identity that you embrace is finite and body-oriented, and
it gathers its sense of itself from its interpretation of its
surroundings and the way its surroundings respond or do not respond to
it. This constitutes unconsciousness!

You have literally only one experience of identity which is consciously
available to you, and that experience of identity, I am declaring to
you, is not Identity, but a sense of Identity. It is the sense of
Identity that will be lost, but not the experience of existing, not the
experience of being Conscious. And to refine that slightly, it will not
constitute the loss of being Consciousness. Therefore, this identity
crisis is a part of healing, a part of Awakening. It is to be embraced
rather than resisted. It is to be rejoiced about, even though all you
can see is that it is obviously an experience of loss. But, again, it is
a loss of a conceptual image projected upon Reality, which has altered
the perception of Reality, obscuring It, but which has never altered
Reality in actuality, and never for an instant altered or annihilated
You.

Your habit, your conditioning, is to scramble to reestablish, somehow, a
sense of Identity. But the real call is for letting go of a sense of
Identity and letting yourself into the apparent Void of Awareness, of
Consciousness—the simple experience of being—and then simply abiding in
It and paying attention. Without the overlay of a sense of Identity upon
the experience of Consciousness, Consciousness has the opportunity to
register as the Meaning of Identity, and Reality has the opportunity of
being Known.

And so, to use current terms, this is not an identity crisis, but a
healing crisis which, if you successfully resisted it, would constitute
no healing.

I know that you think you are just hearing the words, and that they do
not have relevance—no practical meaning; that they express an
intangible, idealistic, unusable set of paradigms. But, I will tell you
that they are registering with you deeply, and that from where we stand,
you are rousing more significantly throughout more of the full spectrum
of You.

I encourage you not only to endure this apparent meaninglessness and
loss of identity, but to consciously embrace it as representative of the
shift into the being of pure Awareness, as a most desirable, healthy,
and Sane experience. It is not happening for no reason. It is happening
because for nine years you have practiced Listening, which has
constituted an essential part of your waking up! And it has constituted
a sufficient enough arousal of You in your right Mind to trigger further
spontaneous Awakening that you could say is not a result of conscious
three-dimensional choice.

The only so-called three-dimensional choice you can make in this process
is the choice to Listen, the choice to be in the not-knowing Place.

This identity crisis, this health crisis, this distressing experience
you have been having, has arisen since our last conversation, has it
not? Has it not become more pointed? More unavoidable? More obvious?
How, then, can you say that things are getting worse, that there is no
progress, when the movement that you have found distressing is a
significant movement of Awakening? I facetiously say, “Maybe you will
arrive at a point where you will not know who you are.” What is
facetious is the use of the word “maybe.” But, you will not arrive at a
point where you don’t know that you are. You will not arrive at a point
where you will not be aware, conscious.

There isn’t any definition of Identity. There is only the experience of
It. And the true meaning of Identity is found in the experience of being
Consciousness—not a point of consciousness or awareness.

The simple fact is that you have always been conscious, but you have
felt it necessary to come up with a definition of what that means. A
definition is a concept, and a concept is an interpretation—a
translation, if you will. And so now you are involved in a translation
back to the spiritual original of You, an undoing of an act of defining
yourself to yourself, which caused you to lose the experience of your
Self.

The three-dimensional frame of reference is the realm of definitions,
and that is why it is apparently constituted of time and space.

In the beginning, God, created all that is—at least so it is expressed
in the first chapter of your Bible. And then, in the second chapter, man
provided definitions—named all that God had made. Man has been living in
the world of his definitions ever since, unconscious of Reality as It
is, unconscious of his Identity as Consciousness, Mind—God’s recognition
of Himself in His movement of Consciousness.

What you have been experiencing as a problem over these last few days
has actually been your healing occurring, your Awakening occurring—the
loss of a sense of yourself as not only a thinker but the definer, the
interpreter! The words do not say, “And God saw everything that He had
made, and interpreted it to be good.” I will tell you that your healing
is progressing nicely, and the prognosis is excellent, and the loss of a
sense of yourself and the loss of definitions that seemed to give
everything meaning is not a problem, but the solution.

I encourage you to abide in, and be totally allowing of, the
meaninglessness, and the inability to know who you are. I encourage you
to be comforted by the experience, rather than defining it as bad and
resisting it.

In the beginning, when our conversations first began, you allowed
yourself to be in the not-knowing place. At that time, the not-knowing
place was a place of not knowing intellectually. Now, the not-knowing is
striking at, or cutting through, the very core of the sense of Identity,
and the meaning of every thing that has been defined.

In the absence of the definitions, in the absence of any means to
identify yourself, Reality, the Kingdom of Heaven, and your Self as the
Christ, the direct expression of God, experiencing everything from God’s
point of view, will begin to be available to you. If you will just pay
attention, and not try to hold it all in the grasp of concepts, or the
grasp of a thinker, and know that whether or not you, as a sense of
identity, are doing well or not, whether you are being able to hold onto
your definitions or not, this movement of Awakening is proceeding, and
the undoing will be complete. I encourage you to be curious without
preconceptions as this image overlaying Reality fades, and Reality is
revealed, clear and perfect.

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